The essential justice of the measures is not the only consideration affecting high income and inheritance taxes. There remain the questions of expediency and feasibility. Under the first head the objection is sometimes raised that taxes which appropriated a considerable portion of the larger incomes and inheritances would diminish very materially the social supply of capital. Immense sums of money would go into the public treasury which otherwise would have been invested in commerce and industry. Two questions are raised by this situation: first, whether it might not be better for society to have these sums devoted, through public works of various kinds, to consumptive uses instead of to an increase in the supply of capital; second, whether the reduction in the savings and capital provided by the persons paying the taxes could be offset by increases in saving among other classes. Even if it be assumed that the first question should receive a negative answer, it is not improbable that the second should be answered in the affirmative. In other words, the increased saving which the poorer and middle classes would be enabled to make as a result of the shifting of some of their burden of taxation to the large incomes and inheritances, might very well counterbalance the curtailment in the investments of the wealthy classes. Even if this possibility were not fully realised, even if the net volume of capital in the community were somewhat diminished, this disadvantage might be more than neutralised by the wider social benefits of the taxation policy. With regard to the feasibility of very heavy income and inheritance taxes, it is sometimes contended that neither of these measures can be made effective toward the reduction of abnormal fortunes.[200] It is held that the successful collection of these taxes requires the co-operation of the persons affected by them; that if the rate should go above ten or twelve per cent., the income receiver would evade the tax in a great variety of ways, while the owner of a large estate would transfer his property outright to a trust company, which would after his death make the desired distribution. The man who urges these objections is a very high authority on taxation, especially on its administrative side; nevertheless his contentions are not absolutely conclusive. In particular, it does not seem probable that high inheritance taxes could be evaded by the simple devices that he mentions. It ought not to be beyond the power of administrative ingenuity to find methods of defeating such subterfuges. However, it is altogether likely that the possibilities of evasion would be sufficient to prevent the imposition of tax rates that approached within measurable distance of the borderland of confiscation.